The First English Detectives

The Bow Street Runners and the Policing of London, 1750-1840

J. M. Beattie

Examines police reform in London, especially after 1815, and the creation of the Metropolitan Police in 1829

Chronological structure

The First English Detectives

The Bow Street Runners and the Policing of London, 1750-1840

J. M. Beattie

Description

This is the first scholarly study of the Bow Street Runners, a group of men established in the middle of the eighteenth century by Henry Fielding, with the financial support of the government, to confront violent offenders on the streets and highways around London. They were developed over the following decades by his half-brother, John Fielding, into what became a well-known and stable group of officers who acquired skill and expertise in investigating crime, tracking and arresting offenders, and in presenting evidence at the Old Bailey, the main criminal court in London. They were, Beattie argues, detectives in all but name. Fielding also created a magistrates' court that was open to the public for the first time, at stated times every day.

A second,
intimately-related theme in the book concerns attitudes and ideas about the policing of London more broadly, particularly from the 1780s, when the detective and prosecutorial work of the runners came to be increasingly opposed by arguments in favour of the prevention of crime by surveillance and other means. The last three chapters of the book continue to follow the runners' work, but at the same time are concerned with discussions of the larger structure of policing in London - in parliament, in the Home Office, and in the press. These discussions were to intensify after 1815, in the face of a sharp increase in criminal prosecutions. They led - in a far from straightforward way - to a fundamental reconstitution of the basis of policing in the capital by Robert Peel's Metropolitan Police
act of 1829. The runners were not immediately affected by the creation of the New Police, but indirectly it led to their disbandment a decade later.

The First English Detectives

The Bow Street Runners and the Policing of London, 1750-1840

J. M. Beattie

Table of Contents

1. Introduction2. Henry Fielding at Bow Street3. John Fielding and the making of the Bow Street Runners4. Detection: the Runners at Work, 1765-17925. Prosecution: the runners in court, 1765-17926. Fielding's Legacy: police reform in the 1780s7. The Runners in a New Age of Policing, 1792-18158. Prevention: the Runners in Retreat, 1815-1839EpilogueBibliography

The First English Detectives

The Bow Street Runners and the Policing of London, 1750-1840

J. M. Beattie

Author Information

J. M. Beattie was born in England in 1932 and emigrated to the US in 1949. He studied at the University of San Francisco (BA, 1954), the University of California, Berkeley (MA, 1956), and Cambridge (Ph.D, 1963). He taught in the History Department and the Centre of Criminology at the University of Toronto from 1961 to his retirement in 1997. He has published The English Court in the Reign of George I (1967 and 2008), Crime and the Courts in England, 1660-1800 (1986), and Policing and Punishment in London, 1660-1750: Urban Crime and the Limits of Terror (2001).

The First English Detectives

The Bow Street Runners and the Policing of London, 1750-1840

J. M. Beattie

Reviews and Awards

"The strengths of this book are ones we have come to expect from Beatti. The reasearch is deep, in primary and secondary sources. He has clearly learned his way around digital sources such as the Old Bailey Sessions Papers. His wide reading in the most recent scholarship makes this account particularly compelling. The prose is crisp and persuasive, with a judicious mix of statistics, illustrations, and anecdote." --Journal of British Studies

"John Beattie's latest work, The First English Detectives: The Bow Street Runners and the
Policing of London, 1750-1840, is a fine addition both to his personal legacy as a historian
and to the wider contribution of the Toronto School of legal history scholarship. ... [W]ritten in a lucid and elegant style, incorporates meticulous research, and offers a remarkable level of narrative detail. ... [T]he precise narrative road map Beattie provides, using both primary and secondary literature, is of inestimable value to anyone interested in the reform of metropolitan policing and the development of official attitudes toward crime." --Journal of Modern History